Hot beverages such as coffee and hot chocolate are typically sold by fast food restaurants and convenience stores in disposable drinking cups. In order to prevent spillage of the beverage, the cups are often provided with lids that have drinking openings permitting drinking therethrough without removing the lid.
Satisfactory lids formed of relatively heavy plastic material, for example the lid of U.S. Pat. No. 4,949,865, have excellent structural integrity and provide good results in terms of convenience and comfort for the customer. One drawback of these lids is that they generally include a vertical lip at the periphery over which the drink must flow in order to go from the drinking opening to the customer's mouth. Another drawback of these lids is cost.
Other lids formed of thin plastic material, for example the lid disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,738,373, overcome the above-mentioned cost problem, but these lids provide markedly inferior results in terms of operation of the closure member and the aesthetics of drinking from an opening with sharp corners.
Thus, there is a need for a drinking cup lid that has the operational and aesthetic advantages associated with more expensive, thick plastic lids, but at a cost competitive with the thin plastic lids of the prior art.